A brief-yet-ongoing journal of all things Carmi. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll reach for your mouse to click back to Google. But you'll be intrigued. And you'll feel compelled to return following your next bowl of oatmeal. With brown sugar. And milk.

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Sunday, March 19, 2006

Publish Day - Ink Blog - Stinky sewage plant plans

Something smells in the land of London. I was clear across the continent when I wrote this, but through the wonders of wireless Internet access, I was able to remote-file from the lobby of a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building.

Any business owner knows that it costs money to make money. But investing in the future is a tricky game that has more questions than answers: How much should be invested? How fast should it be spent? Will it drive profitability enough to justify the outlay?

It’s a conundrum that London currently faces as it debates plans to build a new sewage treatment plant for the city’s southwest end.

On the one hand, we need to spend the $134 million on the plant and related services to support continued growth. This is how London competes against other cities for new investment.

On the other hand, we can’t spend ourselves into a debt-created fiscal prison.

The fact that so little is currently known about the returns suggests that city employees should be spending a little more time with their spreadsheets. Londoners deserve to know the full fiscal picture.

If businesses of all size follow the investment-return model, is it too much to ask that our city does the same?

-30-

Your turn: Does your city's management of projects like this cause your blood pressure to rise? What is it about Frank Lloyd Wright that makes me think of sewage?

Sewage projects are expensive... and the controversy is more often over the "Not in my backyard syndrome" than the money involved. But it sounds like a lot of money so I hope they've done their homework (or will do it at your insistence).

We have a lot of projects going on in our little town (outside Milwaukee) and many people are not happy about them. I'm trying to be patient because I do think they are for the greater good, but in the meantime, they're a big pain in the you-know-what.